Dog joins fight against hospital superbug

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Cliff, a two-year-old beagle, has been trained to identify the infectionMarije Bomers/PA

Foreign Staff

Published at 12:01AM, December 14 2012

Dogs can sniff out the hospital superbug Clostridium difficile with a
high degree of accuracy, a study has found. Researchers at VU University
Medical Centre, in Amsterdam, report in the online journal bmj.com that
animals could help to prevent outbreaks of C. difficile. They trained
a two-year-old beagle called Cliff to identify the infection. After two
months he was able to sniff out the superbug in the air surrounding hospital
patients and in stool samples. Cliff identified 25 out of 30 infected
patients and 265 out of 270 patients who did not carry the infection.
Researchers wrote: “Dogs are quick